Computer Studies w/o Excessive Coding? 255
Peterus7 asks: "I'm a student at the University of Washington, and I was planning on majoring in Computer Science or Informatics until I took Computer science, and I'm realizing that it's simply beyond me. I grew up with computers, and naturally I want to study a field that involves a lot of interaction between people and technology (mainly computers), but the Intro to Java class I'm taking now is driving me over the edge. Any suggestions for a technologically intensive field that doesn't require ungodly amounts of coding, or perhaps any general methods for surviving computer science courses for new students?"
cognitive science & hci (Score:3, Interesting)
i started out as computer science and engineering and didnt like how it pigeon-holed students. cognitive science is a great field involving computer science, neuroscience and psychology.
(MIT's media lab is a cogsci lab)
EE Info (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as a degree in computing without much programming you are probably going to have to look into IT administration or networking, I would think those routes would have less programming involved. Just ask an counselor at a school that provides these degrees.
Instructional Technology (Score:3, Interesting)
I took the masters program offered by the Bloomsburg University IIT [bloomu.edu]. The program covered the use of modern multimedia tools and techniques (and some light programming) in conjuction with instructional design and task analysis.
There are quite a few other similar programs out there - be mindful that there is a whole track at other colleges focused simply on instructional design - thats not not as technical and tends to focus on academic issues regarding computers in education and CBT.
One of the most interesting things you can with this degree is get an Instructional Technology Specialist certificate. Then you are certified to direct technology operations for an entire school district. Now you're working with people!
Maybe your should re-think your career? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not take a little time to visit your university career guidance centre, do a few psychometric tests, chat with an adviser and see if there might be a career you are happier in?
Re:Oh dear. (Score:4, Interesting)
2) One of my best friends at Uni who got a 1st had done no programming before starting his degree.
3) Many of the people who had been 'hacking on code since high school' actually did less well than they thought they would as they had preconcieved ideas about just how good they were.
(I'm also a CS graduate)
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. At my uni the very first programming class any CS/SE/CE student takes is done in Haskell, of all languages. I think a lot of people found it difficult to think in that language, perhaps because they had already used, or were expectig to use, Java or C++ or similar. I didn't much like it at the time but looking back, it was an excellent choice for an intro class. Touched upon a lot of concepts that I didn't see for years after in C++ and Java coding, even simple stuff like recursion. Makes you think differently. One of the better COMP classes I've taken!
maybe electronics (Score:1, Interesting)
In fact, the period when u learn the most about computers is when u do computer architecture, where for me at least, we had to learn assembly language.
However, maybe by doing digital logic or something, u can be involved with computers, and only worry a bit about coding, but dont count on it too much.. I'm actually recommending at least basic digital logic to ppl, because for me at least, it taught alot about optimisation, amongst other things
I dont want to start a flamewar, but u will actually find learning C++/C, later on alot easier then java, because java is less sensitive to compile time problems I've found, and because there aren't pointers it can confuse ppl..
anyway, dont give up so easily mate.. I suggest u learn a bit of C/C++ on the side to see if programming really is ur thing or not..
Re:How to think... (Score:4, Interesting)
Another good quote is "Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes" (Dijkstra, I think).
I suspect this isn't the case in all universities, but actual programming was a very minor part of my Comp Sci. degree (at a UK university). In fact, I don't recall ever writing any code in my "Programming Language Design" or "Artificial Intelligence" modules.
MIS (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course you may consider simply obtaining technical certififcations in place of an actual degree, they can be just as fruitful on a resume if not moreso. MCSEs and CCNAs and A+s require almost no knowledge of programming.
sorry (formatted properly and a few extra lines) (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, CS courses don't transfer well, and I don't feel like paying large ammounts to private school to finish non-major coursework (unfortunately I can't transfer non-major coursework in from another university at my old school).
I hate writing stupid code. I hate paying someone for the privilege of writing trivial classroom code. I'm working without the degree, so a math/physics double major with a minor in CS will work for me. Frankly, no one cares what your major was in IT. CS-based math courses (theory of computation|algorithms|discrete math) tend to lack rigour. My experience is that they often stop sort of proof. How can you study graph theory without proofs? Erdos and Dykstra are rolling over in their graves! CS is the one field you can teach yourself.
Do you want to be in IT or do you like applying computers to scientific problems? Frankly, physics, chemistry, and biology have computational subfields. There are even a few bioinfomatics programs for undergraduates. You might find cognitive science or statistics interesting. Heck, many good physics departments offer a computational physics/scientific computing course(s). It just depends.
The other option might be to suffer through a few CS courses, and get a degree in something else and study CS at the graduate level. Most CS departments take people from other disciplines. Math is the best in that regard. Some MIS programs (like CMUs) allow you to focus on non-programming areas and are pretty good. You might like a program like Boston University's "Cognitive and Neural Systems". CalTech has a similar program at the Koch Lab. I even saw a "computational mathematics" program at JHU that required little programming. In fact, some of the best computer scientists are secretly mathematicians. Knuth, (Martin) Davis, Minsky, Ritchie, and many others have PhDs in math.
The little joke among computer scientists is that the best don't often study it. Logicians and combinatorical mathematicians tend to be better with the theory. Engineers are better with hardware. EEs are usually the ones who write device drivers. Heck, who wouldn't want a Claude Shannon or Lofti Zadeh working on CS problems. Frankly, I don't understand the point of modern-day CS. It's not math and it's not quite engineering. I like CS, but I just hate the boring coursework.
If you're still not convinced take a look at "The Feynman Lectures on Computation" and "Feynman and Computation". One of his hobbies was algorithm analysis. The man wasn't just a brilliant physicist. He did ground-breaking work with computers. I was first introduced to analog computation and quantum computation by Richard Feynman's work. He also worked on some deeper computational problems during the Manhattan Project (see "Surely You're Joking" [his memoirs]).
Type analog computation in a search engine and you'll see that this area of CS is done by other other fields. I've been reading about the applications of analog computation and their relation to limits of computation (see Neural Networks and Analog Computation: Beyond the Turing Limit [umass.edu]). In fact, the future of computing may lie in some analog world [indiana.edu]. The computer program is math (see An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications [homepages.cwi.nl]). Church's Thesis may prove to be the most valuable piece of 20th century mathematics. In fact, I've seen a few logicians that use LISP code to do mathematical work (like Gregory Chaitin).
Ultimately, I think you need to figure out what you really enjoy doing and find other people who are doing it.
Do you want to learn or get a piece of paper? (Score:3, Interesting)
You need to toil for a bit as a lower level undergraduate to give you the base knowledge that you'll need later. If you think that intro to Java is bad... just wait until you are a Junior and they have you code a project in a language that you've never heard of -- and expect it done in two weeks or so.
The lower level classes seperate the wheat from the chaff. I'll put it to you this way. My CSI 201 course (the first course for majors) was a lecture with 550 students in it.
Data structures had around 450.
Algorithims had about 200.
Senior classes had 40-50 max.
If you can't hack it, that's cool. But if you stick with the program, you'll find the higher level classes a heck of alot more interesting.
Re:ECE (Score:1, Interesting)
Software engineering is just as bad... Engineering is a dirty hack, but generally practical things are most easily accomplished by dirty hacks (hence the usefulness of an engineering degree).
Beauty: Science > Engineering
Usefullness: Engineering > Science
Pay: Engineering > Science
Instead of CS, try IT. (Score:4, Interesting)
Case in point. I went to a community college and got an associates degree in Computer Science. I could do programming, but my heart just wasn't in it. Let's face it, some people like to code, some don't, and I'm one of the ones who isn't that fond of it. So when I went on to a 4-year institution [rit.edu] I switched my degree from CS to Information Technology. Instead of focusing purely on coding like with a CS degree, the IT degree involved many more aspects of the computer. I did my concentrations in systems administration, and in networking, and now I have my bachelors degree for IT. (there were also concentrations in writing code, and web design, and database work, and things like that)
But the point I'm trying to make is that as a systems admin, I have to write code perodically. Our account-generation program on campus is 100% hand-coded, and I'm quite proud to have done it myself. But do I code on a daily basis? Nope. Just when necessairy to make a task easier. And honestly, that suits me just fine. So I'd recommend looking at alternative computer degrees at whatever college you are attending to see if they have something that might suit your needs better than CS does. I wouldn't expect to get away with no coding, but you can definately get away with less.
At RIT the alternative degree to CS was the Information Technology degree, like I mentioned. At the community college I went to, I believe the alternative to the CS degree, was the CIS (Computer Information Systems) degree. So just keep an eye out and see what else is availble. Just don't shut yourself off from coding 100%, there are times where even a little bit of code will help make your life a lot easier.
Spectrum of Degrees (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm currently an Information Systems major at Ohio State [osu.edu] and feel it's a good fit for me. (The major was formerly called Management Information Systems). IS at OSU is about (outside the General Ed requirements) half business and half tech. The tech is about two thirds programming and one third systems analysis.
I don't enjoy coding, and I don't think I'm that great at it (relative to others who post here). However, I'm good enough and tenacious enough to pull off B's with some A's in the programming courses.
As for what I'll be doing full-time after school, I will be doing tech support and project management for Campus Crusade for Christ's largest state-side region. I think my degree will have prepared me for that because I will be able to speak the language of business / operations as well as the language of the "dedicated" programmers and engineers. My goal coming in to MIS was to be like PERL: jack of all trades, master of very few.
I started off as an engineering major (because of my standardized test scores), but the CAD classes kicked my ass hard enough that I decided not to pursue engineering. It sounds like perhaps you're having the same problem with coding as I did with CAD.
There is a reason some courses are called "weed-out classes."
I recommend you find a major that you enjoy AND are good at. It may or may not be tech-related. If you want some specific tech skills thrown in, consider hitting a community college or similar for certificates / experience in the areas of IT that interest you. A non-tech degree / skills with some tech certificates thrown in can actually be pretty attractive to a lot of employers.
I was offered and accepted a non-tech position with U.S. Bank in 2001 for that same reason.
Good luck!
- Neil Wehneman
[Off Topic] Re:CompSci Alone is Worthless (Score:2, Interesting)
Fascinating. There are under forty philosophy majors at ECU and just over a hundred CS majors. Three of us are CS doubling philosophy. Then in my Phil of Mind class we have a CS graduate and a former CS major.
I personally see connections to CS in my philosophy classes all the time (Coherentism = PageRank), but I don't know about the others.
But to answer your question, your niche is the same as a simple computer science major's, except you're more promotable because employers tend to like philosophy majors. We can (supposedly) handle critical thinking and such better than most people.
Re:ECE (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, maybe you had a non-random sample set. Both of the worst coders I had to work with were EE's. One guy couldn't have written "hello world" without help. Yeah, most aren't that bad, but there was a feeling about the EE's that they had no interest in traditional programming, they wanted to make the stuff that we made programs on.
Computer Science exists for Software Engineering (Score:3, Interesting)
Understandable, but a very ivory tower attitude.
The reality is that the majority of your students are going on to be programmers, perhaps even software engineers, but they're not going to be computer scientists. This doesn't mean you shouldn't teach computer science, many of those companies want people with CS education, a solid grounding in CS is necessary to be a great engineer.
By way of comparision, it would be like a physics TA telling his students, "If you just want to build bridges and buildings, go somewhere else, we're here to create Physicists, not Engineers." Yet I damn well hope that engineers are taking those physics classes. Pure theory physics is interesting, but it's only useful when people translate it to practice. We need some of each and the pure physicists have to expect to train the engineers.
It's unfortunate that CS blends the science and engineering into a single school. Your naive belief that there is a better place for would be programmers to go is incorrect. There really isn't a software engineering degree; the closest things tend to be fluffy and superficial; they focus on tools and techniques but fail to expose the computer science you need to excel. If you were to limit your class to people who want to be and have the potential to be computer scientists you'll be looking at some very small classes, a lower profile, and lower levels of funding.
I am not a computer scientist, I never have been, I never wanted to be. I'm a software engineer (or a programmer, or a hacker, or a coder, whatever). That's what I wanted to be when I entered college and it's what I'm happy to be today. But I highly value my computer science degree, it's one of the keys that allows me to be a good software engineer.
(I note that you prefer Computing Science over Computer Science to emphasize that you're about the theory, not the actual machines. It's a nice idea, but doomed one. Computer science [google.com] is the accepted term and most colleges and universities call the department that. It's a tough life for the serious computer scientist. As they say, how real of science can it be if you need to append "science" to its name? If you really want to try and change things, try for just "Computing," no silly science after it. Hmmm, that doesn't look half bad. "I have a degree in Computing," sounds reasonable even.)
As for the University of Washington.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The impression that I get from my friends that are in the CS department is that yes, they do force you to slog through a bunch of coding classes, but you really need to develop those tools to do the cool and interesting things you probably want to do with computers. (Plus, if you stick with it, a CS degree from UW is one of the better ones.)
Now, since you're at a pretty big school, if you really don't feel like sticking with it, there are other options that might be closer to what you want to do.
In particular, check out the Applied Computational Mathematical Sciences Department [washington.edu] and the ridiculously competative Information School. [washington.edu]